Crossing the River Styx
by Aya Rose
Summary: Tomoyo dies, and that's how it starts. Girl-Girl love.
1. Death

I do not own CCS.

If I did there would be no changes though. You have to deal with the hand you're given, from a pair of Queens, to a full straight. You can't just ignore cannon.

**Warning:** Homophobes, it's better you not read this. Otherwise I have to waste time ignoring your flames, kthxbai.

A/N: Sorry, it was very late, and I even forgot to run the spell checker. Corrections in place now.

---

"I love you Sakura."

"I love you too. You're my best friend Tomoyo!"

"Silly Sakura."

-

It wasn't like she hid her feelings.

If she did, it would be easier to guess what happened. That the stress of hiding her feelings was just too much to handle. That she was doomed to be another statistic of teenage repression, shame, and angst.

But she didn't, which only confused the police more.

-

"Do you think your mother loved my mother?"

"I'm sure of it Sakura. Just like how I love you."

-

Even worse, Sakura tried to explain that she didn't mean to die, that it was just an accident, and she wandered a bit further from home then she would normally have. That when death came, she didn't couldn't fight it.

That Tomoyo had told her so, in person.

That only got her put in the insanity ward for a few weeks.

The only thing she learned while there was simple. Never to not tell anyone the truth.

-

Tomoyo tilted her head up to the sky, pulling her sweater tighter as the last snowflake fell on her nose, melting quickly as it stole away tiny a bit of her warmth. She was a still a little upset. Sakura had called to tell her about the engagement. It was wonderful that Sayoran had picked New Year's Eve to ask her to wed. But even so, Tomoyo just had to take a small walk in the heavy snowfall to clear her head of her own selfish and needy thoughts.

She was very happy, as Sakura was one step closer to her true happiness. She was a bit sad, because she never got to explain everything to Sakura before she was older. She shivered and held the wool sweater a bit tighter to her. Even though the snow seemed to be slowing, the air seemed to only be getting colder.

Her legs were starting to cramp after the hours of walking, and the air kept getting colder little by little. Even now she was smack in the middle of a park she didn't quite recognize, especially with the thick blanket of snow covering everything. "A quick rest couldn't hurt." she thought to herself as she cleared a spot on a park bench and sat down, looking around to try to figure out just where she was.

-

She didn't want to tell anyone, but she had always been afraid of Tomoyo dying cold and alone. Ironically enough, that's exactly what she did.

During High School, Tomoyo didn't really seem interested in boys at all, actually turning away a number of suitors. She would be polite, and always do it alone so as not to hurt them or their feelings, but sometimes the rumor mill would still find out. Other times Sakura would just follow, and find out with her own eyes.

She couldn't hear what was said, only the depression in the boy's voices, and the wistfulness of her friend's voice. It was obvious she was in love, but with whom?

-

Her eyes opened, and she stood up, with much more ease then she was used to in winter. Normally, just walking made her grow tired, worse even when it was cold. In fact, now it didn't even feel that cold to her.

Of course, she was also still sitting on the bench. That was a little weird.

"It's because you're dead!" a rather chipper voice behind her spoke, "Now come on, you're already late, and there's always more work to be done. That body was always just a loaner."

Tomoyo (the spirit one) turned to see a scrawny dark haired girl in a black kimono holding an oar larger then her entire body behind her back, "Can I talk to Sakura one last time though?"

"Ooh... the boss'll probably kill me, but..."

-

Why for a little bit, she thought Tomoyo might be homosexual. Especially when Naoko decided to come out to her friends about her occasional flings with other girls. It was still a guarded secret among their group, but even Sakura could tell when Naoko had a crush on someone.

But still, Tomoyo seemed to desire no one.

-

She was still deliriously happy before it happened. Just a knock at the window.

Being on the second floor, it was a surprise upon opening it to see Tomoyo and another girl riding on what looked like an over sized magic broom.

The girl nudged Tomoyo quickly as the wooden oar they sat on slowly rose into the sky, "I don't have allot of time Sakura. But I hope you have a wonderful marriage, I'm sorry for dying, I didn't mean to fall asleep out there, and I'll always love you."

And with that, Tomoyo left the living world.

-

That wasn't even what explained it all to her.

The way Tomoyo's mother completely threw herself into her work, ignoring her daughter's death didn't explain it all.

Helping to clean her friend's room after the police tore through things, looking for a suicide note of some type didn't explain it all.

The weekend spent moving the tapes and the costumes into storage didn't explain it all.

As she sat in the middle of a barren room, walls bare of any sign of life, the setting sun shining through the window she started to understand. A room she had time and time again spent hours laughing with her dearest friend, she finally understood the first part of the puzzle. Her life was, from this point on, to be just like this room. Simple, effective. Open and full of light.

But without Tomoyo, Sakura would always be incomplete.

Then she started seeing her.


	2. Awakening

Homophobia is common enough around FF.N this warning is necessary: If you don't like the very idea, please stop reading anything I write.

This saves us both valuable time and energy, you don't even have to send hateful spam reviews to me, I don't have to come up with interesting ways to debase you. We both win.

I still own no rights to CCS, and I think CLAMP is fine with that. I'm thinking this series is coming out as an interesting series of prologues. Oh well.

---

Kero had taken to her death harder then almost anyone else. As if he had failed a direct order from Clow himself. Which, if anyone had actually asked him directly, was exactly the case.

He could still her Clow Reed's voice ringing in some half recalled memory, "Kero, there will be a girl, filled with a dark light. You'll know her when you see her. You must protect her as long as you can, for she is born marked by death. Her life is as connected to the cards as the next Master of the cards." Clow often prophesied while reading the card, but rarely was he so specific as that time.

In the end, every attempt to save her, every leap of action to keep her from danger... All it took was one careless night and she was stolen away in the blink of an eye. He should have known Tomoyo would be upset by Sakura's insistence to plan a wedding, if He was with Tomoyo instead of trying to convince Sakura to give up on that Gaki...

The most painful thing about hindsight, is that everything could always be done better then it actually was.

-

The moment she opened her door, and saw chocolates outside was the morning she knew she wasn't going insane.

Each piece had the care and attention to detail that only Tomoyo put into any of her works. The fact the girl had been dead and buried over a month by that point didn't matter.

It was a Valentine's Day tradition going back to the 3rd grade for the two. Tomoyo would **never **forget about it. Her father wouldn't do something like it, and Touya's chocolates never came out the same as Tomoyo's. And Sayoran would always wait until White Day to give her anything at all.

The most logical answer was that Tomoyo faked her death, and was in hiding.

Sakura didn't like the logical answer. Logic didn't hold much ground in Sakura's world anyhow. There was probably magic involved... somehow.

-

Truthfully, it wasn't a bad job. Without help, the afterlife was pretty confusing. Especially if you didn't know where you were going.

After she died, she was taken to a long line, where she waited for a while to be judged. Her entire life flashed before her eyes during her judgment, birth to death, before the oni in charge informed her that she was chosen to act as an agent of Death.

She had to wear a kimono ("Required Dress Code" her director said), but she did at least get to chose the style. The sakura blossoms were her first choice, though some of the higher agents got to wear more common street clothing. But she did get holidays off, and could roam through her 'district' without having to worry about ghost hunters.

All in all, being dead wasn't all that bad.


	3. Milkrun

Score Card so far:

- One Engagement Ring

- One Dead (Post-Corpus) Tomoyo

- Sakura in insane asylum for Two weeks

- One promise that Homosexuality is a major factor, but not the driving factor behind this project.

... Oh! And one person catching the yu-yu-hakusho cross plot! Good for you WaMat!

Happiness is never assured, but yet I am still not officially involved with CLAMP or CCS.

-----

She was always the odd girl out in elementary school.

Chiharu and Yamazaki always had each other, even when all they could do was fight. Fighting was just the natural way they flowed together, where one stopped, the other would begin. Each one completed the other.

Even Rika, who she thought she had a connection to, was engaged. And for a very long time at that. She always had some one who completed herself, even if the rest of the group couldn't tell exactly whom.

Sakura, Tomoyo, and Syaoran though, had a dynamic no one could completely understand. Tomoyo supported everyone, Sakura most of all, and Sakura then supported everyone in turn. When Syaoran was added, the three spent so much time worrying about everyone else, it's a wonder they had time for themselves.

She really only had her books and writing to retreat into.

Then High School hit.

All of a sudden, people were expected to have relationships, make-out sessions, shopping trips. She wasn't prepared for a change of that magnitude.

Everyone else had some one to spin off too. Even Tomoyo rooted her self in the self destructive obsession she had on Sakura. Naoko couldn't help but pity her. No one could really do anything about it, it was just the thing Tomoyo did. It was part of what made her Tomoyo. It wasn't like Sakura would wake up Gay one morning, and make it all come true. She didn't believe it, she knew Tomoyo didn't believe that, no one even thought of it as a possibility.

A few years of that, then Tomoyo up and died.

Suddenly, Sakura was incomplete. It simply didn't make sense.

She still had Syaoran. They were engaged to be wed. She still loved Syaoran, it was all over her face. It shouldn't have affected her that much. But it did, and none of her precious books could explain why.

Obviously, Naoko was just looking in the wrong books. This required a trip to the library.

Hopefully they removed that pesky 99 books at one time limit.

---

"Good Morning! Welcome to the Other Side!"

Maxwell didn't have time for this foolishness. He had to finish the finance report before morning. "Get the hell out of my office girly, before I call Security."

The perky teenage girl glared at the older business man. Obviously one of the janitorial staff's children was wandering the building. The fact she was in pink kimono or what ever the hell the Japanese call them, was just a sign she was spending too much time playing games instead of important work.

"Maxwell Stanton, right?"

He just grunted in reply, trying to go back to the keyboard... which his head was laying on...

As he stared down on his body, the girl pulled a small 3x5 card from her robes, reading carefully, "Maxwell Stanton, age: 45 earth years, blood type: O, cause of death: heart failure, judgment: yet to be determined. Please come with me."

"But.. but..."

"Please sir, your time has passed. You must continue on."

--

Somehow, the thing bothering Tomoyo most as she opened the barrier between worlds, the blue wisp following closely behind her, was how much she needed to work on her opening line.

---

Sakura shot up in bed, looking franticly around her room. Kero was still asleep, but at her desk was the human form of The Dark card, gazing longingly at moon though the window.

The dark haired woman turned in the seat and smiled at her mistress, "That's wonderful Sakura. You felt her too?"

----

Note: Character sections in order are: Naoko, OC, Very short Tomoyo, and Sakura.


	4. Midnight

AN : You know I don't own CCS, YYH, or practically enough money to buy a pack of M&Ms. All properties are the rights of the owners, all I'm doing is proposing a theoretical situation... Where Tomoyo dies, throwing off the balance of nature.

* * *

"Hey! The newbie got a fresh one!" 

"Good job Tomoyo! The first job is usually the hardest."

Clapping filled the office like structure, the youngest reaper still blushing from the acclaim. Yes, it only looked like an office to some people, other times it might appear as a cave filled with Oni, or a haunted house, or what ever the observer would expect to see in the afterlife. But for now, and to Tomoyo, it appeared as an office filled with co-workers. Complete with cake, streamers, and windows with a bustling city scape.

"Those American's are rather hard to convince too."

"It's understandable why that branch is so dark and oppressive, they're just so darn stubborn."

The interoffice relationships still mildly confused her. Why would she appear as a human, while someone from America or Europe would appear skeletal? She was lead to believe that people created their appearance upon taking the job, so why did the entire Australian branch not even bother to take onforms? But she knew she had plenty of time to learn. It wasn't like she was going any where. Dead was still dead. It wasn't like she could crawl back to her own body anytime soon.

* * *

"What do you mean, did I feel her too?" 

The Dark just smiled her simple _'I know more then you'_ smile, and went right back to looking out the window, "I think you know exactly what I mean."

"Tomoyo..."

"She's still out there you know. Just under the surface. That's why you can't find her right now. Kero won't have much luck, but..."

The Dark never gave straight answers. She'd imply, hint, and tease with information, but she'd never come straight out and say it. That was for people like The Light, to be obvious, straightforward, and blunt. "But... I might be able to?" Sakura was able to ask, her voice quivering softly.

Once again the card just smiled up at the moon, "Kero represents The Sun, The Sun is a Star that rules the daytime. Kero will never find her alone."

"But something that works at night would be closer to finding her? Like the Moon?"

The card just smiled at the distance, slowly and quietly fading back into the night.

* * *

_The third type of polyamorous relationship is the poly-family: "an inter-relationship of 3 or more people, in which there is a strong relational commitment between all members (which may or may not include sex)" (D. Corbett, personal communication, 3/17/99). The members spend significant amounts of time together as a group, and the well-being of each person is a significant priority to each of the others. _

The pile of books would be threatening to all but the most hardcore of psychology students. Those working on doctorates in deviant sexual behavior, or perhaps a group of workaholics looking for a reason to blow a month's research grant.

And for any insight she gained on the situation, none of it was really helpful. Sakura was still incomplete, Tomoyo was still dead, and Sayoran was still...

Still...

Actually, in the entire time Naoko had known the boy, she had never had a chance to actually pay attention to him. She knew of him of course, Sakura loved to talk about the things they did together. But all she knew was that he was from China, Hong Kong probably, Meilin was his cousin, and he was engaged to Sakura.

This was a situation that needed immediate correction.

She couldn't make a safe diagnosis without more study. Not that she was a psychologist anyway.

But she could always try to fake being one. Beyond writing, acting was fun too.


End file.
